PRS: MCQ revision questions

1
PRS MCQ revision questions

• Which of these factors is a density independent
  factor of population regulation?
• Breeding spaces
• Food
• Mates
• Foraging spots
• sunlight

2
Intraspecific competition is a major force in
ecology because of

• overlap in resource use
• mechanisms to diffuse confrontation
• Dispersal
• Competitive ability
• Costs and benefits

3
Animal Behaviour fixed action patterns and
learning

• BS 111
• Ecology Biodiversity

4
Learning objectives

• discuss the importance of signals in animal
  behavior and the way releasers stimulate fixed
  action patterns
• discuss the significance of learning and of the
  interaction of innate and learned behaviour in
  the lives of animals

5
Ethology

• What is the mechanistic basis of the behaviour,
  including chemical, anatomical, and physiological
  mechanisms?
• How does development of the animal, from zygote
  to mature individual, influence the behaviour?
• What is the evolutionary history of the
  behaviour?
• How does the behaviour contribute to survival and
  reproduction (fitness)?

6

• These questions highlight the complementary
  nature of proximate and ultimate perspectives

• Proximate causation, or how explanations, focus
  on
• Environmental stimuli that trigger a behavior
• Genetic, physiological, and anatomical mechanisms
  underlying a behavior
• Ultimate causation, or why explanations, focus
  on
• Evolutionary significance of a behavior

7
Behavioural Ecology

• Behavioral ecology is the study of the ecological
  and evolutionary basis for animal behavior
• It integrates proximate and ultimate explanations
  for animal behavior

8
Behaviour

• Influenced by innate and learned factors
• Innate
• Inborn or present at birth.
• Behaviour
• What an animal does and how it does it.

9
Natural selection

• genetic variation generated by mutation/recombinat
  ion organisms possess features to max. genetic
  representation in next generation
• Optimal Behaviour animals behave in ways that
  max. fitness, e.g., feeding behaviour optimize
  energy efficiency/net energy gain

10
Genetic component of behaviour

• Genes exert a strong influence on many behaviours
  
• (even learned behaviour depend on genes that
  create a neural system receptive to learning).
• E.g. lovebirds

11
Fixed action patterns

• Konrad Lorenz, Niko Timbergen, Karl von Frisch
  (Nobel prize 1973)
• 1930s Ethology
• Animals carry out many behaviours without ever
  having seen them performed
• Innate
• Beneficial but carried out in ways that show the
  animal is unaware of the significance of their
  actions

Interactions between parent and offspring often
involve FAP Kelp gull chicks peck at red spot on
mothers beak to stimulate regurgitating
reflex E.g. birds, parent returns to nest, blind
young raise heads in begging behaviour.
Releaser impact of parent landing on nest
12
Cont.

• Fixed action pattern (FAP) innate (highly
  stereotypical) behaviour
• FAP initiated will continue
• Triggered by external sensory stimulus sign
  stimulus or releaser, e.g. moths that instantly
  fold their wings and drop to ground in response
  to ultrasonic signals sent out by predatory bats

13
Sticklebacks

• Aggressively attacks males that invade territory
• Releaser red belly
• Will not attack if no red belly/will attack
  models as long as red present
• Red colouration of body parts is a releaser for
  aggressive or sexual behaviour in many species

14
FAPs cont.
Goose scan
15
CONT.

• Adaptive responses to specific stimuli selected
• Variations on experimental releasers almost never
  arise naturally
• Egglike objects commonly found near goose nests
  natural selection probably would have resulted in
  a mechanism to identify own eggs

16
Example cuckoo

• Cuckoos brood parasites
• Lay their eggs in the nests of other species
• Young may cause death of hosts young
• Fitness advantage of host of recognising the
  cuckoo egg
• Reed warbler feeds a baby cuckoo once hatched
  but will recognise own eggs and remove cuckoo
  eggs
• Natural selection can lead to complex behavioural
  mechanisms when there is strong selection
  pressure

17
Imprinting

• Inc. both learning innate components generally
  irreversible
• Has a sensitive period i.e. limited phase in
  dev. When certain behaviours can be learned
• E.g. young geese following mother
• Spp. that provide parental care bond critical

18
Learning

• Modification of behaviour in response to specific
  experiences
• Often affects even innately programmed
  behaviours, e.g. FAPs
• Nature (genes) or Nurture (env.) ??? -
  interaction genetic env. factors

19
Maturation, habituation, imprinting

• Maturation ongoing dev. Changes in neuromuscular
  systems, e.g. young birds stopped from flying
  until older, released and fly straight away
  dev. Not learning
• Habituation simple type of learning involves
  loss of responsiveness to unimportant stimuli
• Imprinting e.g. greylag goose

20
Conditioning

• Classical conditioning Pavlovs dog. Associative
  learning
• Operant conditioning (trial and error learning)
• Observational learning listening to and adopting
  the songs of other birds

21
Having received a face full of quills, a young
coyote has probably learned to avoid porcupines
22
A young chimpanzee learning to crack oil palm
nuts by observing an experienced elder
23
Rhythmic behaviours, environmental cues

• Circadian rhythms exogenous? (external), e.g.
  light or endogenous? (internal), biological
  clock. But not in tune with env. Exo. Needed to
  keep in tune with outside world

24

• Behaviors such as migration and reproduction are
  linked to changing seasons, or a circannual
  rhythm
• Some behaviors are linked to lunar cycles
• For example, courtship in fiddler crabs occurs
  during the new and full moon how does it know?

25
Migration

• Regular movement of animals over relatively long
  distances
• Mechanisms
• piloting from one familiar landmark to the next
• Orientation can detect compass directions
• Navigation determining present location relative
  to others as well as compass directions (sun,
  stars, map sense)

26
Migration

• Migration is a regular, long-distance change in
  location
• Animals can orient themselves using
• The position of the sun and their circadian
  clock, an internal 24-hour clock that is an
  integral part of their nervous system
• The position of the North Star

27
But what about on cloudy days/nights..

• The Earths magnetic field
• Competing ideas magnetite magnetic iron ore in
  heads of migrating birds, fishes
• Guided by effects of earths magnetic field on
  photoreceptors in the visual system animals
  require light of particular wavelengths to orient
  themselves in magnetic field

28
Each Spring, western sandpipers migrate from
their wintering grounds which may be far south as
Peru to their breeding grounds in Alaska. In the
Autumn they return to their wintering grounds
29
Summary

• Innate and learned behaviours
• Evolutionary logic of behavioural ecology
• FAPs
• Intelligence
• Maturation, habituation, imprinting
• Bird song
• Conditioning
• Rhythmic behaviours

30
Recommended Reading

• Campbell and Reece, Biology. Chapter 51,
  pp1120-1134